AWS Hot Startups for February 2018: Canva, Figma, InVision

Note to readers! Starting next month, we will be publishing our monthly Hot Startups blog post on the AWS Startup Blog. Please come check us out.

As visual communication—whether through social media channels like Instagram or white space-heavy product pages—becomes a central part of everyone’s life, accessible design platforms and tools become more and more important in the world of tech. This trend is why we have chosen to spotlight three design-related startups—namely Canva, Figma, and InVision—as our hot startups for the month of February. Please read on to learn more about these design-savvy companies and be sure to check out our full post here.

Canva (Sydney, Australia)

For a long time, creating designs required expensive software, extensive studying, and time spent waiting for feedback from clients or colleagues. With Canva, a graphic design tool that makes creating designs much simpler and accessible, users have the opportunity to design anything and publish anywhere. The platform—which integrates professional design elements, including stock photography, graphic elements, and fonts for users to build designs either entirely from scratch or from thousands of free templates—is available on desktop, iOS, and Android, making it possible to spin up an invitation, poster, or graphic on a smartphone at any time.

Figma is a cloud-based design platform that empowers designers to communicate and collaborate more effectively. Using recent advancements in WebGL, Figma offers a design tool that doesn’t require users to install any software or special operating systems. It also allows multiple people to work in a file at the same time—a crucial feature.

As the need for new design talent increases, the industry will need plenty of junior designers to keep up with the demand. Figma is prepared to help students by offering their platform for free. Through this, they “hope to give young designers the resources necessary to kick-start their education and eventually, their careers.”

Founded in 2011 with the goal of helping improve every digital experience in the world, digital product design platform InVision helps users create a streamlined and scalable product design process, build and iterate on prototypes, and collaborate across organizations. The company, which raised a $100 million series E last November, bringing the company’s total funding to $235 million, currently powers the digital product design process at more than 80 percent of the Fortune 100 and brands like Airbnb, HBO, Netflix, and Uber.